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Kremlin Begins Talks With Chechens
November 18, 2001
By JOHN IAMS
MOSCOW (AP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin's envoy to Chechnya met with a leading rebel representative Sunday in the first face-to-face talks in more than two years of war, Russian news agencies reported.
Viktor Kazantsev met with Akhmed Zakayev, a representative of separatist Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov, at a government country house on the outskirts of Moscow, the Interfax news agency reported.
The meeting was held behind closed doors and there were no details on what was discussed, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported. Interfax said talks between the two representatives could last several days.
Kazantsev and Zakayev had spoken by telephone several times since late September, when Putin offered rebels the chance to start talks on laying down their weapons, but the two had not met in person.
The Kremlin would not confirm that the meeting took place.
Putin, who built his popularity largely by taking a tough stance on Chechnya, repeatedly rejected Western calls for a negotiated settlement of the latest war there, which began in 1999.
But in a Sept. 24 speech outlining his response to the terrorist attacks in the United States, Putin urged the rebels to contact Russian authorities to discuss disarming and ending their separatist fight.
That proposal for talks to end the fighting was the first during the two-year war. He and other Russian officials had previously ruled out any talks with rebels and said they should be eliminated.
Kazantsev flew to Moscow from his post in southern Russia, while Zakayev flew in from Turkey on a charter flight for the meeting, ITAR-Tass reported. Turkey has a sizable ethnic Chechen population.
Russian troops withdrew from Chechnya after a 1994-96 war that killed thousands of people, many of them civilians, and left separatists in control of the small, mostly Muslim region in southern Russia.
They returned in 1999 after militants based in Chechnya invaded a neighboring Russian region and after a series of deadly apartment-building bombings that Russian authorities blamed on the rebels.
Russian forces now control most of the region, but its soldiers are still killed in rebel attacks almost every day, and few top separatist leaders have been captured or killed.
The Kremlin insists its fight in Chechnya is a war on terrorism, but Western governments and human rights groups have accused Russia of using excessive force.
After Putin signaled close cooperation with the U.S.-led anti-terror campaign, the United States softened its criticism, endorsing Russia's allegations of ties between rebels and Osama bin Laden.
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